Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Remember That Time I Blogged About How Crazy North Korea Is?; Holiday Eve

Oh wait. That was yesterday.So now today North Korea launched an artillery attack against a South Korean island, killing two South Korean soldiers, in an act that North Korea described as retaliation for an artillery attack by South Korea.South Korea, for its part, acknowledged that it had, in fact, fired artillery shells in the area, but described its shelling as routine training operations and denied that any artillery shells had fallen within North Korean territory.What the hell?Most longtime readers of this blog know that I'm not exactly a hawk when it comes to the use of our military forces, but this is just getting ridiculous. I'm definitely a "force as a last resort" kind of guy, but these North Korean attacks against our allies are definitely moving closer and closer to a "last resort" sort of scenario.I just can't get over the fact that an entire country can be so paranoid and belligerent and- just weird. Do they really want a war with the U.S. and South Korea? Is China really going to back North Korea if they provoke a full scale military conflict? (I seriously tend to doubt it. China just has way too much to lose at this point in that sort of scenario.) And I know that a lot of people just think that North Korea has been showing aggression as a way of strengthening its bargaining position on the national stage, but don't they realize that there's a point at which this strategy becomes counterproductive? (maybe when they start launching attacks that are actually killing people, for instance)Ugggh.It's a big ol' mess, and even if we were to defeat North Korea in an armed conflict, South Korea would undoubtedly suffer terribly.

On a note that's way more important to me on a personal level, Amy flew out today to join her family in Phoenix for Thanksgiving. I know she's really excited about the chance to spend time with them, but it's going to be weird to have her gone, and I'm going to miss her a lot.It's definitely feeling like holiday season eve!